Self-enhancement
The drive to maintain and inflate a positive view of oneself.
What it means
A broad motivational tendency to seek, sustain, and amplify a favorable self-image, expressed through a suite of biases that protect self-esteem. It manifests as the self-serving bias, illusory superiority, unrealistic optimism, and selective memory for flattering feedback, among others. Theorists treat it as one of the primary engines of self-related cognition, sometimes in tension with self-verification (the wish to be seen as one truly is) and self-assessment (the wish for accurate information). Moderate self-enhancement is associated with resilience and well-being, while extreme forms shade into narcissism and poor calibration. Its strength and expression vary across cultures, being more overt in individualist and more muted in collectivist settings.
Examples
After a group project succeeds, members recall their own contribution as larger and more pivotal than teammates credit.
Ask a room of drivers whether they are above average at the wheel and most hands go up — a mathematical impossibility that nobody in the room finds odd.
A trader remembers his winning bets as skill and his losing ones as bad luck, so his mental record shows a far better hand than his statement does.
First described in Tied to Allport, Greenwald (1980), Sedikides & colleagues.